


Second Choice

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 21:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17108498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Tim and Martin spend Christmas together.





	Second Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flammenkobold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flammenkobold/gifts).



> Because you told me last year that I owed you fluffy mistletoe kisses. <3
> 
> Written for the Holiday Cheer event - December Twenty-Second, Mistletoe.

It would have been impossible, once, to accuse Tim of clockwatching. He’d know when it was the end of the workday, because that was when everyone else would start packing their things together, but he’d finish any tasks he was particularly involved with, or linger back for the others, and they would walk out together, chatting.

It hasn’t been like that, lately. He’d lost his taste for the work, and for his colleagues, since Prentiss. Since _Jon_. He’s usually completely ready to go before the hour, doesn’t set an alarm, but has an unerring sense of when it would go off, if he did. He leaves the Archives with a faint, barely-acknowledged _bye_ to the others, and they let him be – they haven’t commented on the difference, if they’ve even noticed it.

Sometimes Tim hates it, and sometimes he’s glad of it, and he doesn’t know which he should be when he looks up from his desk, one hand already on the strap of his bag, and finds Martin there. He’s still, like he’s been there, trying to work out what to say, for fifteen minutes already, eyes flicking up from the ground at Tim’s movement.

“What?” Tim demands, not bothering to try and soften it. They had had another argument about Jon at lunchtime, he’d let his mouth run away with him, and he’s ready to neither forgive Martin nor apologise himself.

“I just wanted to know if you had any plans,” Martin says, to his credit managing to keep his expression from slipping all the way into _kicked puppy_. Perhaps he’s still angry too. Tim wouldn’t blame him.

“Plans?” Tim echoes. He’s not been making plans for anything, lately. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point.

“For Christmas?” Martin elaborates, and there’s a sliver of genuine concern in his voice, like he thinks Tim might have forgotten the existence of the holiday itself.

Tim sighs, heavily.

“No,” he says, letting the thud of his bag falling back to the floor punctuate the word.

“Oh,” Martin says, a little brighter, but his eyes dip again, hands fidgeting. “Um, I don’t have any either. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come over?”

“You should invite Jon,” Tim comments, sourly. “Oh, no, wait! He’ll spend the whole time thinking you’re about to stab him with the turkey skewer.”

“ _Tim_ ,” Martin says, in the tone of voice that says he’s desperately trying to be reasonable. He opens his mouth to go on, but Tim cuts him off.

“I’m not interested in your little bonding session,” he growls. “So, if you’d excuse me-”

“Jon isn’t coming,” Martin says. “He… I think he has other plans.”

“Wouldn’t tell you what they were, would he?” Tim concludes. “And, nice to know that I’m second choice.”

“It’s not like that. I didn’t invite him.” Martin shuffles a little, glancing over one shoulder as though he’s concerned Jon might overhear. “I suppose I would’ve, but I would’ve invited Sasha, too, if she wasn’t going to spend it with her new boyfriend.

Tim grunts, and drags his bag off the floor again, pushing his chair back with the other hand, and letting the legs scrape along the boards.

“Tim,” Martin says. It’s sounding a little more desperate, Tim notes, and the idea of it sits uncomfortably in his head. “Please. I don’t want to be on my own, and I’d like to spend it with you.”

“Don’t you have family, or something?” Tim asks, and swallows a pang of guilt as he remembers that, just like him, Martin never talks about his family, so he probably doesn’t. “You’re going to want to watch Doctor Who, right?”

“I don’t, really… we don’t have to.”

“Tough,” Tim says, and hopes he won’t regret it. “We’re watching it.”

“You mean you’ll come?” There’s a bright hope in Martin’s face that Tim has to squash the impulse to crush, and he forces a smile onto his own.

“Looks like it,” he says. “But you should come over to mine, the TV’s bigger.” And the worms had never been there, the only traces of that musty smell the ones that Tim imagines for himself. “You’ll be able to get there all right?”

“Yes,” Martin says, grinning like it’s already Christmas morning. “I’ll… I’ll bring crackers.”

“Nothing would bring me greater joy,” Tim says, flatly. “I’ll see you then, shall I?”

He doesn’t wait for a response, just walks past him, towards the exit, though he can still hear Martin’s called agreement from behind him, can hear the happiness in his voice. He wishes that it would lighten his chest as much as it clearly has Martin’s, but it would take a push for him to admit to himself that he feels any looser than he had at lunchtime.

If nothing else, he supposes, it’ll mean he has to decorate.

* * *

Martin turns up halfway through Christmas morning, with three bulging shopping bags and an even more ludicrous jumper than normal, patterned with bands of themed dogs – collies in Santa hats, dachshunds with antlers, labradors tangled in fairly lights, greyhounds in their own ludicrous jumpers. Tim considers it, winces, and resolves to never look directly at it again.

“Martin,” he says.

“I brought some stuff,” Martin says, holding out the bags. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I just got most of-”

“Before you come in,” Tim says, barring his way with an arm across the threshold. “House rules. You don’t mention the Institute, and you especially don’t mention Jon, and neither will I. Got it?”

“Got it,” Martin says, and tries to shuffle forwards again, his legs awkward against his bags. “Er…”

Tim points upwards, to where he’d hung a sprig of mistletoe over the door, without looking at it. It takes Martin a second of squinting to realise what he’s gesturing at, and then his cheeks colour, and Tim actually finds himself smiling.

“Really?” Martin asks, looking back at Tim, and flushing even more.

Tim shrugs.

“You can stay out in the hall if you want,” he says.

Martin sighs, and proffers him the bags. “Will you at least take these?”

“Planning to go all in with the hands, are we?” Tim asks, mostly to see if Martin’s face will go a different shade, but he misses it when he takes the bags, and sets them down gently to the side.

Martin kisses his cheek like he’s breakable, the faintest brush of lips, with no pressure behind it. It’s probably not something that he does all that often, so Tim moves aside, and lets him wander in, with a look on his face that Tim would be offended to recognise as relief, so he doesn’t. He busies himself reclaiming his bags, and struggling with them towards the kitchen. Tim closes the door and drifts after him, watching as he starts to decant an inordinate quantity of food onto the worktop.

“How does your oven work?” he asks, pausing over the dial.

“There are only two of us,” Tim points out, with a concerned glance at the two as yet undisturbed bags. “I’ve got a couple of ready meals, we can just stick them in the-”

“ _Tim_ ,” Martin protests, in the same tone that he uses for people who’ve suggested newspaper as a weapon against spiders.

“Fine,” Tim says, reaching over Martin to turn his hand on the oven dial. His fingers are still cold from outside, and Tim swallows the impulse to squeeze them in his own, try to warm them up. “Just don’t expect me to peel anything.”

He ends up peeling everything that needs it, while Martin hovers around the oven, as though he can stop the turkey he’s brought from exploding through the sheer force of the anxiety he’s directing at it, with the occasional break to worriedly check the cooking instructions on his phone _again_.

“Are you going to stand there the whole time?” Tim asks, when he’s got nothing else left to do but rinse his peeler under the sink. The water splashes up against his sleeves, and he grimaces. “This thing’s probably going to take a while, and-”

Martin’s frowning at his phone screen like it’s lied to him.

“Want me to go and look it up for you?” Tim offers.

“Please,” Martin says. “I did find a recipe before I came, but it’s all in Fahrenheit, so I keep having to check the conversion, and I usually do just have a ready meal, but because you’re here I wanted to-”

“ _Martin_ ,” Tim chides, but he offers him a smile before he abandons him to go and slump over his laptop on the sofa, tucking his legs up messily among the cushions. When he looks up from the screen to call out the instructions he finds, the words catch in his throat. Martin’s hunching forward, slightly, peering into the oven, his face gently lit by the operating light, and the glow from the Christmas tree in the corner that Tim had only half-bothered to decorate. It looks _peaceful_ , a world away from the Institute and their arguments and those endless squirming worms.

He clears his throat, and tries not to think about the excess mistletoe that he’d hung up around the flat, about how easy it would be to encounter Martin under it, about kissing him properly. His thoughts keep creeping back, though, even when the timers start going off.

Somehow, the dinner turns out to not be a disaster, though Martin’s crackers are – the hats are far too big, and while Tim’s sure that he wears his quite well, Martin’s flops down stubbornly over one eye until he gives up and takes it off, the jokes about as fun as one of Elias’ meetings, and neither of them gets the tiny packet of screwdrivers.

“Potatoes are great,” Martin mumbles, through a mouthful of them.

“You have to make the sides go fluffy,” Tim announces, straightening his back at the praise. “Before you put them in the oven.”

Martin blinks at him, and Tim wonders if he’s unfamiliar enough with actual potatoes that he doesn’t know what he means.

“It makes them crispy,” Tim says, and taps his fork against one, to emphasise the point.

“Sure,” Martin says, and Tim busies himself refilling his wine glass.

They finish in time for Doctor Who, though Tim has to tow Martin away from the washing up by his sleeve, his fingers brushing against the inside of Martin’s wrist. On the shelf behind the sofa, Tim notices yet another scrap of mistletoe, this one rather sorrier-looking than the others. He can just about remember leaving it there, when it had started to fall apart before he could get it properly fixed to his bedroom’s door frame.

The episode is something to do with superheroes, from what Tim can tell, but Martin’s face is far nicer than the ones on the screen, which keep ending up in half, and maybe he’d had a few too many glasses of wine with dinner, but he thinks he especially likes seeing it so relaxed. It’s been a while since he’s seen it like that at the Institute, if he ever has.

When it finishes, Martin’s nearly asleep, and Tim’s somehow ended up with one arm wrapped loosely around his shoulders. Martin tips his head back into the contact, as though he’s ready to let go of consciousness altogether, only for his eyes to widen again, catching on the same piece of mistletoe that Tim’s been trying not to think about.

“How long’s that been there?” he asks, the question hazy.

“About a day?” Tim hazards. “I only decorated yesterday afternoon. That bit was a bit awful though. Left on the shelf.”

“Are you going to, then?” Martin asks, turning his head to direct a tilting frown at Tim.

“Am I going to what?”

“Kiss me,” Martin says, with a heavy blink. “After that fuss you made earlier…”

“Do you _want_ me to kiss you?”

“Tim, I’ve been wanting you to kiss me since-”

Tim hauls himself upright, awkwardly extracting his arm to prop himself up with, and presses his lips to Martin’s. He means to stop there, assumes that after before, Martin probably doesn’t want anything more, but Martin’s hand is on his cheek, thumb brushing over the skin. It doesn’t stop at the worm scar, isn’t jolted out by it, just traces down, following his neck, feather-light. Tim’s lips part, as he lets out a soft sigh into Martin’s mouth, and kisses him like he means it. Martin means it, too, his fingers pushing up into Tim’s hair, smoothing through it as Tim shifts, trying to get a better angle.

They break apart to breathe, and Martin smiles up at him.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Really, you shouldn’t thank me for kissin-”

“No, no,” Martin protests, his hand gone, as he gestures Tim’s assumption away. “No, not for that, although, for that as well – just, thank you for letting me come here. I really didn’t want to be on my own.”

“Anytime,” Tim says, shifting the word around in his mouth. “You’re welcome.”

Martin hums out a response, and gently takes Tim’s wrist, stroking at the inside of it.

“You can kiss me again,” Tim says. “If you want. I don’t think it’s bad luck or anything.”

Martin must do, because he pulls him back down, makes some small noise against Tim’s mouth when he cards his own fingers through Martin’s hair.

“It hasn’t been,” Tim tells him, between kisses, speech blurring at Martin’s lips. “The worst Christmas ever.”

“Thanks?” Martin buries the word against the side of Tim’s neck, a syllable of warm breath against his skin. His hands are starting to wander, tugging at the hem of Tim’s shirt. Tim moves them away.

“This,” he says, with a tug at Martin’s offending jumper that only makes him consider giving it a little leeway, when he notices how easy it is to pull him about by it. “This has got to come off before anything else.”

“It’s _warm_ ,” Martin protests, trying to free the wool from Tim’s fingers.

“I can make you warmer,” Tim assures him. He quirks his eyebrows, and Martin swats at his chest.

“I’m getting you one in the sales,” Martin threatens. “You’ll see.”

Tim sighs, but Martin’s hand finds the back of his neck, and angles him into another kiss. He leans into it, closing his eyes, and wishes that they could just stay there until next year.


End file.
